


Imprisoned

by SqutternutBosh



Series: Torchwood Season 3: What could have been [5]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Hub Lockdown, M/M, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27593594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SqutternutBosh/pseuds/SqutternutBosh
Summary: Episode 5 of my alternate series 3 with added Owen and Tosh!Jack goes out alone to collect something small that's come through the Rift. It's small, inconspicuous, and the alien trapped inside it has taken over Jack's mind and body, locking them all down in the Hub, ready to pick the Torchwood team off one by one.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: Torchwood Season 3: What could have been [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735756
Comments: 31
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know - I'm terrible! It's been months since I last updated this series but I really do have every episode all planned out and I'm excited to share it with you all. I started writing this months ago and am working on it again now, so this is just part 1 of the episode, ready to build the suspense - Hub lockdowns are one of my favourite tropes...

Jack is awoken by a shrill beep somewhere near his left ear. It’s piercing and incessant and launches him from deep sleep to alert in mere seconds.

Next to him in the bed, Ianto groans and rolls over.

‘What now?’ he mumbles, eyes still closed.

Jack grabs the Rift monitor from the bedside table and checks it over, squinting as the brightness of the screen lights up his dark bunker.

‘Just something small it looks like, I can walk to it from here,’ he says. He presses a kiss to the other man’s exposed shoulder. ‘Go back to sleep.’

Ianto doesn’t need much encouragement, shifting into the middle of the bed as Jack gets up so he can take advantage of the extra space.

Jack stretches and cracks his neck out. He doesn’t need sleep, not in the same way as the average person, but it’s still a pleasant experience that’s deeply unpleasant to be roused from. Maybe he can get Tosh to adjust the alarm on the PDAs so the Rift alerts are more soothing, perhaps a dawn chorus or some seascapes. The tides on Jack’s home world worked differently to those on earth so every morning on Boeshane it was the sound of waves trawling pebbles up the beach that woke him and even now, all these years later, his brain makes that same association when he hears the sea.

He grabs an undershirt and tugs it on, followed by a pale blue shirt and trousers, slightly creased from being dropped to the floor in the heat of the moment mere hours ago. They’d do for a night time wander.

He slips his feet into his boots and glances back at Ianto – already asleep again – before hauling himself up the ladder and out into his office, where he grabs his coat.

He looks at the PDA again to double-check where he’s going and heads out via the invisible lift so he doesn’t trigger all the door alarms and awake Ianto. His watch reads ten past three and he reckons he can be back in the warmth of his bed again by half past given how close the latest Rift gift has been dropped through.

There’s nobody about on the Plass. The Millennium Centre is lit up in hot pink; he admires the play of the lights across the lettered windows as he walks by, crossing behind the Pierhead Building and the statue of Ivor Novello towards the Senedd. Jack enjoys the quiet of the Bay at this time of night, not even a seagull in sight.

The breeze is cool on his face, waking him up further. He can see his destination in the distance – the Norwegian Church, a wooden building painted in fresh white and black, the flag of Norway dancing above it. According to the PDA, the Rift has deposited something small and lightweight just between the church and the car park behind it.

It doesn’t take long to find the Rift drop when he gets there, it’s not exactly in keeping with the local aesthetic. The item he finds is pearlescent and shell-like, but like no shell Jack has ever seen on this planet. It’s all straight edges and angles, like two pyramids stacked bottom-to-bottom, their ledges shining in glints of purple, pink and blue.

He picks it up. It’s hot, nearly enough to make him draw his hand back and drop it, but he keeps hold of it. The skin on his hands built up a tolerance to burns in his twenties when he spent too long trying to soup up whatever space-faring vessel he could get his hands on.

He lifts it up to eye level and turns it over, examining it. It looks solid, no seams or signs of an opening. He knocks his fist against it and is surprised by the sting he feels – whatever it is, whatever it’s made of, it appears to be very durable.

He’s about to tuck it under his arm and head back to the Hub when he hears someone.

 _‘Good evening_.’

He wheels around, ready to have to defend himself. The voice was confident, challenging.

There’s no-one there.

He wedges the alien shell under his arm and reaches for his Webley before remembering he hadn’t strapped it on before heading out. This was supposed to be an easy retrieval. He edges towards the church, looking around, but still can’t see anyone.

‘Hello?’ he says.

_‘I’m closer than you think.’_

The voice is smooth and silky, like water flowing lazily through a river bed. It makes Jack want to hear more, want to listen to it.

_‘I had a bit of a fight to get in here and make myself heard but I can see it’s going to be worth it. The things I can see in your head, Jack Harkness.’_

In his head. That’s where he can hear it.

‘What do you want?’ he says out loud.

_‘A home. Is that too much to ask?’_

‘You can’t stay here. You can’t stay in my head.’

_‘I like it more than that prison I was in. Cruel, isn’t it, to keep me trapped in there?’_

Jack tries to fight it, but whatever is in his head seems to have control of his body, of his movements. It forces his hands to reach for the alien shell and hold it out in front of him.

‘You came from in here?’ he asks.

_‘That was my prison. I was destined to spend the rest of my life in there, blasting through the darkest reaches of the universe, punished for my crimes. And yet, here I am.’_

Jack gasps, his chest tight, head pounding, and drops to one knee.

‘What did you do?’ he says. He needs to know what he’s up against.

Images flash through his mind. Sparks, echoing screams, skies ablaze with a boiling green fire, a ravaging aurora borealis. His skin prickles as the unmistakable scent of burning flesh fills his nostrils.

Jack drops the shell and wraps his arms around his head, fighting to clear it and stay in control.

 _‘You’ll figure it out_.’

‘Get… out…’ he pants, head still in his hands. His brain feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice, slowly tightening millimetre by excruciating millimetre.

_‘I don’t believe I will. I’ve got to rest now, I’ve got to look through your mind and learn. I’ll be back though, when it’s time. See you soon, Jack.’_

Relief. It’s gone, his head is clear.

Jack frowns. What is he doing on the floor? He doesn’t remember getting here. Ianto will be pissed if he has to take a trip to the dry cleaners for something as minor as Jack tripping over.

He blinks, eyes tired again now. He spots the alien shell in front of him and scoops it up.

‘I must be more tired than I thought,’ he says, pushing himself back onto his feet. He covers his mouth with the back of his hand as he yawns. The alien shell is quite relaxing to look at, he thinks as he turns it over in his hands, wondering what it is. The streetlight ripples across its iridescent surface. Soothing.

A few minutes later, he’s climbing back into bed beside Ianto having left the shell on his desk. He thinks Tosh will get a kick out of it in the morning.

‘You smell like outside,’ Ianto murmurs as Jack spoons up against his back, tucking his nose into Ianto’s neck.

‘Is that bad?’ he asks through another yawn. He really does feel tired now, mind and body, like he’s just been running laps while trying to solve an extra hard sudoku.

‘Just different,’ Ianto replies, shuffling to get comfortable. ‘Find anything interesting?’

‘Something small and shiny. I’ll give it to Tosh to look at tomorrow.’

‘Today, you mean.’

Jack yawns again. ‘Today, sure. That’s why we sleep now.’

Jack closes his eyes and drifts off before Ianto even has a chance to reply.

*~*TW*~*

Jack has nearly forgotten that Gwen is bringing Rhys in for her 12 week scan with Owen until he sees them descending down through the invisible lift (something Rhys never fails to get a kick out of).

‘Good morning, Cooper-Williamses,’ he calls across the Hub as the pavement tile reaches its landing spot.

‘Morning, Jack,’ Gwen replies. Rhys tilts his head in recognition of Jack’s greeting.

Jack crosses the Hub to meet them halfway as they head over to the Med Bay.

‘How’re we feeling this morning?’ he asks them.

‘Nervous? Nervous but good? I’ll feel properly good about it when Owen gives us the all clear,’ Gwen says, dropping her things onto her desk as they pass it.

Rhys continues to grip her free hand tightly.

‘You alright there, Rhys?’ Jack asks.

‘Now that we’re here all I can think about are all the things that could go wrong, y’know?’ he says, chewing his bottom lip. ‘I know it’s silly but…’

Jack shakes his head. ‘Not at all. I promise you though, Owen may not be a midwife but he’s an excellent doctor and Gwen is going to get so much support through this. We’re all here for both of you.’

Rhys nods slowly, still distracted, but he does smile. ‘Thanks, Jack. It’s in the back of my mind a bit, Gwen working here, bringing our growing child into this mad place every day.’

‘We are all going to do our very best to keep all three of you safe and happy.’

Ianto passes by and takes some drink requests – Gwen has replaced her usual caffeine order with green tea, sipping on it most mornings now whilst pretending not to be jealous of the fresh coffee the rest of them continue to drink like its water.

‘Ready when you are,’ Owen calls over from the Med Bay. Gwen’s eyes widen and Rhys takes the hand he’s already holding to grip in both of his.

‘This is it then, time to hear from baby,’ Gwen says, leading Rhys over to the Med Bay.

Not long later, as Ianto hands Jack his second coffee of the day, Jack hears delighted laughter from the Med Bay. Throbbing away in the background is the steady wub-wub, wub-wub of the baby’s heartbeat. He smiles into his mug and wanders over, Tosh and Ianto hovering behind him, wary of intruding.

‘All good, Doctor Harper?’ Jack asks, leaving on the railing.

Gwen is laid out on the Med Bay bed, t-shirt pulled up, exposing the slight curve of a baby bump just starting to make itself known at the base of her torso. Rhys stands beside her, still holding one of Gwen’s hands between both of his larger ones. Owen’s scanner doesn’t require the cold gel commonly used, he runs it freely up and around the bump, scrutinising the attached screen.

‘All seems to be cracking along splendidly,’ he says.

‘That sounds like a good heartbeat, yeah?’ says Rhys. ‘A good, strong one.’

‘Definitely,’ says Owen. He lifts his free hand to point at something on the screen. ‘Can you see baby’s head here? And then a bit of an arm?’

‘Oh, oh, I see it,’ says Gwen, teary-eyed. ‘Like they’re waving at us. Hi, baby.’

She turns to Rhys and he beams back, already besotted. Jack remembers that feeling. Even though he and Lucia hadn’t got on by the end of her pregnancy, he had loved their child before they’d ever even met.

He clears his throat and steps away from the scene, giving Gwen and Rhys more time to take it in, just the two of them.

‘I picked something up last night, Tosh,’ he says as he follows Tosh back over to her desk.

‘From that 3am alert?’ Tosh asks.

‘That’s the one. Seems pretty safe and boring but you might be able to find something more from it than me. I’ll go grab it.’

He heads back into his office and sets his mug down before picking up the shell-like item he’d found early that morning.

His fingers have barely brushed its surface when he hears a voice in his head and his full memories of finding it come crashing back with a sense of dread. His back straightens and he stares straight ahead.

_‘Hello again, Jack.’_

Jack cradles the shell in the crook of his arm. He glances out of the corner of his eye through his blinds – Owen, Gwen and Rhys are still, in the Med Bay, Tosh and Ianto are busy at their desks.

‘What do you want?’ he asks quietly, not moving.

_‘I’ve had some time in your mind now. I can see that you were the perfect person to find me and my prison. You’ve brought me to one of the few places on this planet that might have the tools to set me free.’_

‘And then what? When you’re free?’

_‘Well, I wouldn’t want to spoil any of the fun.’_

‘What you showed me last night… The destruction, the screams, all the reasons you were imprisoned…’

_‘Just all good fun, Jack. I like to have fun. Don’t you like to have fun?’_

‘Not like that I don’t.’

Jack is trying to move, trying to put the shell down so he can walk away and break the connection but the voice has taken over his body again.

_‘You like to have fun with your team, don’t you?’_

Somehow, even though it’s in his head, Jack knows it’s whispering. The voice forces Jack’s body to turn and look out at his team through the window, Gwen, Rhys and Owen now climbing up the steps into the main area.

_‘You’re their leader and you hope they’re your friends too. But it hasn’t always been so chummy down here under the Rift has it?’_

Now the voice is showing Jack flashes of his own memories, things he’s buried and moved on from, things that he thought they’d all forgiven – Ianto calling him the biggest monster of all, Tosh’s face after he’d killed Mary, Owen shooting him in desperation to get Diane back, Gwen shouting at him that he could never understand what it’s like for her to keep Torchwood a secret from Rhys.

He buckles and heaves.

‘That’s not who we really are,’ he says.

_‘Incorrect, Captain. I think this is the very essence of who you all are, of the person you are in your heart of hearts.’_

Jack gasps. With all his might, he manages to gain control of his arm and drop the shell onto the ground.

 _‘I don’t need that anymore, Jack, I’m in your head_. _You’re my vessel now and I can use you to get exactly what I need.’_

Head pounding, Jack considers his options. He can feel his own thoughts being squeezed out of his head, whatever has entered his mind is taking ownership of everything.

One drastic but obvious solution comes to mind. He stumbles towards his desk, concentrating hard on reaching out to grab the hilt of his Webley.

The thing in control of his body causes his arm to swing out wildly, the Webley far from reach. He falls flat onto the desk.

_‘No cheating, no resets. Kill yourself and you’ll kill my consciousness too, only I won’t come back. No fair, Jack.’_

Panting, Jack pushes himself back up onto his feet though he still needs to lean on the desk for support.

‘Ianto!’ he shouts.

The man he is about to put all his faith into appears at the door as quick as Jack knew he would.

‘Jack?’ he says, stepping into the office, taking in Jack’s huddled position and the sweat dripping down his face. He starts to walk towards Jack, frowning. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Stay back!’ Jacks yells, voice strangled. He’s having to fight his own hand off reaching for the gun on his desk. He knows exactly what will happen if his fingers manage to wrap around it.

‘Jack, I-,’

‘Get everyone… out of here,’ Jack says through gritted teeth. ‘Leave me… I’ll be okay. Get out, start lockdown.’

‘We can help, Jack, whatever is going on here we can’t just leave you locked in with it.’

‘Ianto, do it… please.’

‘I can’t just lock you up in here not knowing what’s going on here, Jack, I can’t.’

Ianto is resolute, standing firm with his words.

Jack’s hand has found the gun. He watches, horrified, as his fingers curl around the hilt and begin to lift it. The progress of his arm is slow as Jack fights the thing in control of his body but he knows he’s losing whatever control he has left.

His trembling hand points the gun towards Ianto.

‘Go. Take the others. Ianto, go!’

As he feels his consciousness sinking away beneath the power of the thing that has taken over his mind and body, Jack uses the last of his control to jerk his arm and prevent the shot his gun is in the process of firing from passing clean through Ianto’s skull. He hears the crack of the bullet, sees its trajectory skim just over Ianto’s right shoulder and into the wall, and sees Ianto finally take heed of his words, dashing away and locking the door behind him.

He’s under now. The voice has full control. Jack can see what his body is doing but can do nothing about it, can say nothing.

He sees the voice look down at the Vortex Manipulator on his wrist.

‘I think we’ll get this place locked down with everyone here, don’t you?’ the voice says, now issuing from his own mouth. ‘Get the fun started early.’

*~*TW*~*

Ianto’s barely managed to turn the key in Jack’s office door before the lights coming crashing down around him and the lockdown system lights the Hub up red, sirens blaring to alert the team to their new situation.

He knows locking the door is futile, whatever is in there with Jack – whatever is _in_ Jack – will be through it in no time, Ianto’s sure, but he feels better for having put that barrier between them.

He dashes towards the Med Bay, hooking a hand through Tosh’s arm as he goes to pull her up. In the distance, the cog door rolls shut and seals itself.

‘What’s going on?’ Tosh shouts over the sirens.

‘We have to move, now,’ he shouts back. Now at the Med Bay he looks down at the three gathered there – Rhys, startled, hands over his ears, Owen rifling through drawers, presumably for some form of weapon, and Gwen, poised and ready to go, all signs of the doting mother-to-be gone from her face.

‘Follow me,’ Ianto calls down at them.

Once upon a time, Ianto is sure, Owen would have questioned this order, would have questioned why Ianto of all people was issuing orders at all. Today though, he gives a brief nod and the others fall behind Ianto as he passes through the Hub towards a lesser used door down to the archives. As he ushers the others through it, he glances back at Jack’s office – the door is rattling in its frame but he’s not through yet.

Ianto marches past the group and down the dark corridor, entering a key code into the electronic pad on the door at the other end. The air is damp here, and cool, there’s no avoiding the fact they’re deep underground. He gestures the others through the door then enters an override code into the pad on the door, changing the code to something trivial he has memorised for just such an occasion, something Jack will at least take a long time guessing – the ISBN from the back of his battered copy of Casino Royale.

New code approved, he closes the door on them and takes a breath. Even in the dingy light of the upper archives, he can see all their eyes on him.

‘What’s going on, Ianto?’ Gwen asks. ‘Is this a drill, where’s Jack?’

‘Let’s keep moving,’ Ianto says, driving them forwards again, towards a set of metal stairs that go down deep into the darkness.

‘What about -,’ Gwen starts.

‘I’ll explain in a minute, Gwen, I just think we should put more distance between ourselves and whatever is out there, give ourselves space to regroup. Alright?’

‘Alright. Good plan, Ianto.’

He nods, acknowledging her compliment and begins the long trek down the stairs. He knows Gwen and Owen have never been where he’s taking them, and Tosh and Jack only rarely head there. It’s a space he found when looking for somewhere to hide Lisa, and it would have been perfect if there had been a power supply there. Today though, it’s just what they need.

It gets colder and colder as they descend. Once at the bottom of the stairs, they strike out along a narrow corridor, the light growing more and more dim. Damp and mildew line the stone walls and Ianto is sure that they must now be beneath the waters of the Bay.

He leads them through several forks in the path, hoping the maze of tunnels buys them more time. After a few minutes, he opens a door on his right, midway down a corridor. They enter into the small chamber beyond it. Owen helps Ianto shift an old filing cabinet across the door to block it shut. Tosh flicks a switch on the wall and a bare bulb flickers to life over head, swinging on its wire, throwing their shadows around the room.

‘Now that we’re all bloody freezing and lost,’ Owen says, ‘are we allowed to know what’s going on?’

Ianto drops down onto the tilted filing cabinet, sitting awkwardly on it.

‘I don’t know for definite, and I don’t know what it is, but something’s inside Jack, possessing him or using his body, I don’t know,’ he says.

‘How do you know?’ asks Tosh.

‘Jack called me into his office. He sounded weird, he looked weird. He told me we all needed to leave, he was struggling to get his words out, like it was a fight, and I said no, we could help. He said we needed to go and lock him down here and then…’

‘And then?’ Owen prods.

‘He tried to shoot me.’

‘Bloody hell,’ says Rhys. Ianto had nearly forgotten he was there.

‘He missed, obviously,’ Ianto says airily, brushing the detail of his near-death aside. ‘But it’s given me a good indication that whatever is in charge of Jack’s body is dangerous and that he’s lost whatever fight he was having to stay in control.’

‘It must be able to see inside Jack’s head,’ Tosh speculates. ‘I bet it used what it learnt there to trigger the lockdown.’

‘How safe are we here then, if it knows what Jack knows?’ Gwen asks, starting to pace in the small space.

Ianto glances up at the ceiling, imagining the thing wearing Jack’s body prowling around above them.

‘Safe enough for now, Jack hasn’t been down here in a long time and he could easily take a wrong turn,’ he says.

‘Okay, okay,’ Gwen says, continuing to pace. ‘What do we do then? Where do we think this thing inside Jack came from?’

‘He was about to show me something,’ Tosh says, perching down beside Ianto. ‘He went into his office to get it, said he picked it up from a Rift drop last night.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ Ianto says. ‘It’s like a big shell or crystal. Jack didn’t seem to think it was dangerous but then he didn’t have a clue what it was.’

Tosh unclips her PDA from the back of her trousers, stashed there as the alarms went off. She flicks through a few screens and shakes her head.

‘I can’t really tell anything from the readings we got at the time, it was something small and light, made of an unknown substance, not something we’ve come across before,’ she says.

‘It seems our best suspect though,’ says Gwen. ‘Jack was all fine and normal yesterday, right? Well, normal for Jack. Then he brings this thing in over night and suddenly-’

‘Homicidal tendencies,’ Owen finishes.

‘He did _smell_ different when he came back last night,’ Ianto says slowly. ‘You know how Jack usually smells really good?’

‘Yes,’ the other four all agree simultaneously. Ianto catches Rhys blushing at how promptly the answer fell from his own lips.

‘I figured he wears an expensive aftershave,’ he mumbles.

‘No, that’s just Jack,’ Tosh smiles to ease Rhys’s embarrassment.

‘Something about fifty-first century pheromones,’ Owen shrugs. ‘In the future, we all smell really good apparently.’

‘He didn’t smell quite like that last night, something was off after he came back. I thought it was just that outside smell, you know how people sometimes smell a bit different when they’ve been out in the fresh air and you’ve stayed inside?’ The others all nod. ‘But maybe it was this.’

‘Sounds like it,’ Owen says. ‘How come it didn’t kick off on its killing streak straight away then?’

‘Biding its time?’ Gwen suggests. ‘Maybe it needed time to learn what was in Jack’s head, maybe it needed time to take control of him?’

‘What if it’s in one of us too? We’ve all been around Jack today, what if it spreads?’ Rhys asks from his corner of the small room, just beyond the circle the rest of them have formed.

Ianto feels Tosh shiver next to him. They all avoid each other’s eyes. What would they do if that happened and one of the others threatened the lives of another?

‘Let’s assume it’s just Jack for now and we’ll deal with anything else if it happens,’ Gwen says.

‘I think we need to get hold of this thing Jack brought in, whatever it is,’ Tosh says. ‘Maybe if we destroy it, it’ll break some sort of connection with Jack and he’ll be free of it.’

‘Sounds like the best option we’ve got,’ Gwen says. ‘How do we get past Jack and get hold of it?’

‘There are two ways out of here,’ says Ianto. ‘The way we came and another way that brings you out into the archive door we normally use.’

‘We could split up,’ Gwen says. ‘Tosh, Ianto, you can go the alternate route and come up near Jack’s office, try and get hold of the shell. Me and Owen will go the way we came and try and get Jack’s attention, distract him. Rhys, you can stay-,’

‘Like hell am I waiting around down here! And you, acting as bait, in your condition?’ Rhys protests.

‘In my what?’ Gwen says fiercely, jaw set. Ianto can tell this is an argument they’ve already had, one that’s not been resolved.

‘Our _baby_ , Gwen. They go wherever you go. If you’re putting yourself and them in danger, I’m coming too.’

‘ _Rhys_ -,’

‘The man’s made his mind up, Gwen,’ Owen cuts over them both. ‘No good letting him be a sitting duck around here when he can help us out. Rhys, you will listen, won’t you? We’re trained for these situations, so you have to listen.’

‘No problem, mate,’ says Rhys, his eyes not leaving Gwen’s glare.

Gwen tears her eyes from her husband’s and looks to Ianto.

‘Ianto, is there anything we can use down here, any weaponry, any sort of protection?’ she asks.

Ianto drops his hands onto his knees and pushes himself up.

‘There’s a reason I brought us here,’ he says.

He crosses the room to the remaining, upright filing cabinet and slides out the bottom drawer. Inside are five Torchwood issue handguns and several spare clips.

‘No flak jackets but these are better than nothing,’ he says, lifting a gun out and loading it.

‘You know hiding these down here is a breach of lockdown protocol,’ Tosh says shrewdly. ‘There’s a reason the armoury locks down.’

‘Are you complaining, Toshiko?’ Ianto says lightly as he passes a loaded gun up to her.

‘Just observing,’ she says, taking the weapon and testing the weight of it in her hand.

Ianto continues to pass the guns out. Owen holds one out to Rhys.

‘Ever fired anything like this?’ he asks.

Rhys hesitates, then takes the gun.

‘I’ve only ever fired a paintball gun,’ he says.

‘It’s not exactly the same,’ Gwen mutters.

‘I was quite good at it though,’ Rhys adds, as if it makes a difference.

All armed, they stand in a tight circle.

‘What do we do if destroying the shell doesn’t work? Or if we can’t destroy it?’ Gwen asks.

The four Torchwood members look between each other, their faces grim.

‘We’re all thinking it,’ Owen says after a moment. ‘Jack. He’ll come back.’

‘I can’t pull that trigger,’ says Ianto. ‘I can’t.’

‘I’m not sure I can either,’ says Tosh.

Owen releases a long, slow breath.

‘I’ll do it then, shall I? I’ve done it before, after all.’

‘Owen, if -,’ Gwen starts, but Owen cuts over her.

‘Save it, Gwen. If killing the one person who can come back from the dead means it saves any of you, I can do it. Let’s try for Plan A first though, right? He’ll bitch about it for weeks if I shoot him.’

They all nod sombrely.

‘The time lock!’ Tosh gasps suddenly.

‘What’s that now, Tosh?’ Owen asks.

‘If I can get to my desk, I can activate it. The active zone is around the cog door, it’s meant to protect us from intruders but if we can lead Jack to it, we can buy some time.’

‘Got it,’ says Owen. ‘Distract Jack, lead him to the door, trap him in time. Shoot when all else fails. Good plan, team. Are we ready to go?’

*~*TW*~*

Jack opens the door to his office just in time to see his team disappear through the door at the back of the Hub. The red lockdown protocol lights flash over his face. He senses a smile creep across his features but the joy spreading through his body at the sight of the slamming door isn’t his own. He wants to feel fear but it’s quelled by the sensations of another.

_‘I can see in your head, Jack, that you think your team are all very clever. I can see that they are. But do you know what else I see, that other information you have stored away? They’re vulnerable, they’re emotional, they all have little buttons that can be pressed to undo their composure and trip them up. You’d never use this against them, not unless it could save them.’_

Jack tries to respond, tries to yell, tries to make his body fight back but he’s powerless.

_‘Me though? I’ll do it for the fun of it, for the sport, to see how far I can push them. I want to see the fight flare up in their eyes before I squash it out of them. It’s just more fun that way. And even more fun knowing you’ll be able to see it all happen. Once it’s done, it’ll just be you and me, Jack, you and me forever. I’ve got this immortal body now and I don’t intend to waste it.’_

The sirens come to an end. The Hub is still bathed in blood-red light. Jack’s body drops down into Gwen’s desk chair.

 _‘I’m not going to chase them, they’ll be back. I’ve got forever to wait_.’


	2. Chapter 2

Gwen’s starting to doubt whether she should have trusted Owen when he said he could remember the way back up to the main Hub. She’d paid little attention herself to all the turnings Ianto had taken as he led them deep into the Hub and should have known better than to take Owen at his word when he’d brushed off Ianto’s offer to show them back to the stairs. Judging by the sceptical quirk of the eyebrow Ianto had made at Owen’s insistence, he had certainly had doubts of his own.

Admittedly, getting lost is low down Gwen’s list of concerns right now. She’s worried about Jack and whatever’s got inside his head – she’d have thought, once upon a time, that knowing a friend is immortal would make her worry less about that person but it’s not true. He could be suffering or he could be lost to them forever if they can’t help and that’s a terrifying thought.

She’s also worried about the others, her teammates, all going up against this alien mystery with limited equipment and limited information. They’ve come up against odds like this before and have rarely come away unscathed. They’re so lucky there are still five of them representing the name of Torchwood Three and on her worst days she wonders how much longer that can go on.

Most of all though, most of all, she’s worried about Rhys. She can feel his warm breath tickling her neck, he’s walking close behind her, their hands brushing occasionally. Gwen is doing this intentionally, looking for the reassurance of his touch and she thinks he’s doing the same, swinging his arm just that little bit further than necessary to make contact with her as he walks.

Rhys didn’t sign up for this. Rhys was supposed to be back at work by now, showing off the scan of the baby to Brenda and anyone else who’d listen. Yet here he is, down in the damp darkness with her, gun in hand and only the foggiest clue how to use it.

‘Does this, uh, does this happen much?’ Rhys says, voice low. There’s been no sign of Jack following them into the depths but they’ve been keeping quiet, ears alert, all the same.

‘Does what happen much?’ Owen asks from the head of the line. ‘Alien possession or Jack trying to shoot members of his own staff?’

Rhys’s eyes widen. ‘He’s threatened that before?’

Owen shrugs. ‘Once or twice.’

Rhys turns his wide eyes on Gwen.

‘He’s messing with you,’ she tells her husband, giving Owen a look. She tries to anyway, but he’s not looking, they’ve reached a fork in the corridor and he’s trying to decide which way to go.

‘We came from that way,’ Rhys says, pointing. ‘I remember that one red bulb.’

Owen nods and they set off again.

‘Lockdown, is what I meant,’ Rhys says. ‘The Hub closing up like this, shutting you off from the outside world, trapping you all in here with dangerous things.’

‘Not often, no,’ Gwen replies, aiming to appease him. He doesn’t need the full truth.

‘Usually we trigger it ourselves,’ Owen adds. Y’know, keep the danger out of the public. It doesn’t usually get activated on us.’

He stops suddenly and presses a finger to his lips. Gwen pauses behind him and reaches her arm back towards Rhys, holding it out across his body. She strains her ears and peers down the dim corridor.

‘I think it was just a rat,’ Owen says after a moment.

‘I don’t like this, Gwen,’ Rhys says as they resume their walk.

‘It’ll be alright, sweetheart, we’ll get it sorted and get you out of here in no time.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

Gwen knows this. She knows what he’s getting at.

‘I’m not having this conversation again, Rhys. Not here, not now. In fact, I’d rather not have it again at all, ever again. It’s settled, I’m done talking about it.’

‘Well I’m not!’ he replies, voice growing louder.

‘If you’re going to have a barney, could you have one of those passive-aggressive silent ones please?’ Owen asks. He’s continued on down the hallway, not noticing that Gwen and Rhys have come to a stop.

Rhys has stepped round in front of Gwen. He’s looking down at her, breathing heavily.

‘What if it wasn’t just me here, Gwen? What if you had our kid in here and something like this happened?’ he asks.

‘What do you want me to say, Rhys? I don’t have the answers, I can’t deal with these hypothetical situations.’

‘It’s not bloody hypothetical, we’re living it right now. Me, you, and,’ he points towards her midriff, ‘baby makes three. Trapped in your super secret base with your killer boss on the loose.’

‘If you don’t drop this, I’ll be the killer you need to watch out for,’ Gwen warns him, feeling the heat in her voice. She bats his finger away, already fed up of the way people have started to police her own body for her. She knows they mean well but she’s not helpless; her body is strong and she can take care of it herself.

‘You keep shutting the conversation down,’ he says guardedly. ‘This is something we need to talk about.’

‘I’m Torchwood, Rhys, that’s who I am now.’

‘It’s just a job.’

‘It’s not just a job! Everything we do here, it’s so much more than that. I’m so much more than that. I want to be that person _and_ a mum. They don’t cancel each other out.’

Rhys deflates.

‘It scares me, Gwen, I can’t lie.’

Gwen reaches out and takes both of his hands in hers, cupping them even though they’re so much larger than her own. The two guns knock against each other.

‘I’m scared too. But I know, _I know_ , we can figure it out. It’ll be tough, we’ll have to take it day by day, but I know we can do it. I need you to be on my side if we’re going to do that.’

She doesn’t tell him how scared she is that the only alternative is giving Torchwood up. If they can’t make it work, and that’s the only option she’s left with to keep her child safe, she’ll do it. She just can’t tell him that the idea of leaving Torchwood behind, of leaving her friends and everything she’s learnt about the world and the chance to do something to make a difference, is more scary to her than bringing their child along for the ride.

He squeezes her hands. She looks into his eyes, the safe space there, the soft brown irises that feel like home.

‘Of course I’m on your side,’ he says.

‘Right now though,’ Gwen continues, releasing his hands and stepping back. ‘I’m more scared for you. You don’t have to come with us, you can just stay here. I’d rather you did.’

‘Bollocks to that,’ her husband says, unable to resist a glance down at the Glock in his hand as he says it.

‘Now that all that’s over,’ Owen says from the end of the corridor, one foot on the first step on the metal staircase, head tilted up towards the brighter light from above, ‘the only way is up.’

*~*TW*~*

Tosh doesn’t need to ask Ianto how he knows his way around down here so well. She’s sure that if anybody did ask, he’d give them a coy response about being the archivist and someone around here having to know what goes on around their base, but she knows that wouldn’t be the truth. There’s no real reason for him to come down here as these are the old archives, once home to all things deemed useless or irrelevant. They had been emptied and the collection transported to Torchwood House in the late nineties.

No, Ianto knows his way around down here because when he started at Torchwood Three he had to get stuck into familiarising himself with the place from the ground up for one very specific reason.

‘How much further?’ Tosh asks him as they turn onto yet another long corridor. They’ve taken several short flights of stairs now and the air feels less cloying so she feels like they must be nearly up to the main levels.

‘Not much, two minutes tops,’ Ianto replies.

‘So we’ll get there quicker than the others?’

‘A little. Maybe we should stop, give them the chance to get there ahead of us, start the distraction.’

‘Okay.’

They stop. Ianto leans against the wall, dropping his head back. Tosh fiddles with her PDA. It’s still picking Jack up as just one life sign, a steady heartbeat above them in the schematics. She can’t see the others on her map yet as it doesn’t include the sub-basement but she can see the weevils in the cells – their heart rates spiked when the lockdown kicked in and they haven’t yet dropped off.

‘He hasn’t moved,’ she says to Ianto, turning the PDA to him. He flicks his eyes to the screen, not moving his head from the wall.

‘I’m gonna assume that’s a bad thing,’ he says.

‘It is somewhat ominous.’

‘Maybe he’s magically cured.’

‘Could be.’

‘Nope,’ Ianto says after a moment, shaking his head. ‘If Jack was Jack again he’d been charging down here after us, shouting that he’s fine.’

‘What if the… whatever it is… tries to do that? Pretends it’s Jack?’ Tosh posits.

‘Have we got any kind of scan that could help us tell?’

‘Only if he’s willing to be strapped down and have it done.’

‘There we go then, the real Jack will let us do it. Then we won’t have to scan him because we’ll know.’

‘What if it’s just the thing in his head calling our bluff?’

‘You’re hurting my head, Tosh.’

‘Sorry.’

She plays with the PDA, checking through a few other settings but none of them tell her anything useful. She sighs and joins Ianto in leaning back against the wall. She wishes any of them had remembered to grab their comms units on their escape, it would make their current situation much easier to manage if they could talk to the others.

‘You know him best of any of us, Ianto,’ she says after a moment. ‘Could you tell if it wasn’t really him?’

‘Could you tell if I wasn’t me?’ he says.

‘That’s not the same.’

He arches an eyebrow. ‘Could you tell if Owen wasn’t Owen?’

Tosh knows he’s trying to unfoot her, play her at her own game, but she stands her ground.

‘That’s not the same either and you know it,’ she says.

Ianto sighs.

‘There is the smell thing,’ he says after a moment. ‘But even this morning, he’d gone back to smelling just the same as usual, so I guess that wore off… I don’t know, Tosh. We might just have to hope there’s enough of a spark of Jack in there to come to our rescue if it tries anything. He already tried once.’

Silence falls around them, broken only by the occasional drip from the ceiling. Tosh keeps an eye on her PDA screen, waiting for the others to appear.

‘There they are,’ she says after another minute passes. ‘They’ve just appeared on Basement Level Three. Shall we move?’

‘Let’s go.’

*~*TW*~*

‘ _Turns out having forever to wait gets boring,’_ the voice that’s infiltrated his mind informs Jack. _‘I’m going to go and look for your little team.’_

His hands clap down against the tops of his thighs and his body pushes up out of Gwen’s chair. Every movement now is out of Jack’s control, though he rails against everything this interloper is doing with his body. When he hears them speak, it’s not through using his own lips as a mouthpiece, but someone in the back of his mind, the words nudging up against the consciousness he still has.

The bare bit of conscious self he’s still clinging onto had blacked out after using so much energy to throw off the shot aimed at Ianto. He’d come to again not long after, looking out through his own eyes at his hands rattling the office door, fearing the worst had happened. He hadn’t been able to do anything to turn and look, to check for Ianto on the ground behind him and see if the bullet had collided with him.

Then he’d seen him through the glass, bathed in red light, leading the others down into the more obscure end of the archives.

He doesn’t know what his team will come up with next, but he trusts them. He’s sure they’ve come up with a plan and they’re going to stop this alien in Jack’s mind from wreaking any further havoc, and they’re going to free him from it.

In the meantime, Jack’s going to play his part too – he’s going to try to do whatever he can do to slow this other being down.

Dredging up old, old memories, flicking back through his past in disjointed order, flashes of faces he hasn’t thought about in decades, Jack remember his Time Agency training. There were seminars they’d all had to attend, tests every agent had to pass, on dealing with psychic beings. The basics covered how to communicate with them and the more advanced lessons gave out tactics on how to avoid being overwhelmed by them, how to keep your mind your own.

Jack hasn’t entirely failed on that front yet, he’s assessed that the creature can’t see into his remaining active thoughts and consciousness, which means he can make use of the starter lessons: How to communicate with psychic beings.

Looking out through his own eyes as though they’re not his own, as if he’s wearing someone else’s glasses, Jack can see the being has steered his body towards the door the team disappeared through. His arm reaches out to the handle and Jack seizes his moment.

‘Who are you?’ he probes, focusing hard on sending the words out towards the other consciousness, the one he can feel scraping up against his where it doesn’t belong. Communicating just these three small words is exhausting.

_‘I wondered when you’d make yourself heard again,’_ the voice comes back at him. His body pauses, hand resting on the door handle. _‘I already showed you who I am.’_

‘You… showed me what you did… That’s… not… who you are.’

_‘Are we not just the sum of our actions?’_

‘Very… philosophical…’

If Jack had access to his own mouth and lungs, he’d be panting with the effort it’s taking to get these words sent across his synapses. He’d be doubled over, sweat streaming down his forehead.

But it’s working. He’s slowing the thing down. Every syllable is worth it.

‘Where… are you… from?’

_‘Does it matter?’_

There’s a sting in these words. Jack’s touched a nerve.

‘We could… help you.’

Laughter in his head – cold, ironic.

_‘You’re forgetting I can see everything in your head, Jack. You might try to promote a good company image, Torchwood helping the poor downtrodden victims of the Rift, but we both know that’s not the case most of the time. You wouldn’t want to help me. I’m an actual threat and you’ve cut people down, killed them, tortured them, for less.’_

An onslaught of memories rips through Jack’s conscious mind, heated images and emotions forcing their way into the space Jack has carved out for himself in his head. Things he’s buried deep, things he’s been determined to change, lives he’d do anything to get back. All of them screaming, shouting, pleading, crying, bleeding, breaking, dying.

He can’t find the energy for any more words.

_‘I thought so,’_ the voice says. His hand turns the door handle and pushes through into the cool air beyond.

Only a few metres beyond, there’s another door, this time with an electronic key code.

Jack tries to gather the little energy he’s dredged back up on blocking the password from his mind, visualising a barrier around the information. The other consciousness smashes through this and Jack feels his own face twist into a grin – he knows that if he could see this smile in a mirror, it’d look nothing like anything he’d ever seen on his own face before.

_‘You’ll have to try harder than that_ ,’ the voice tells him.

His finger taps the code into the door, but the access light flashes red. No entry.

Of course Ianto changed it, Jack thinks. He would celebrate this if he didn’t already know what the other consciousness is about to do.

It raises his arm and flips open his vortex manipulator. Jack knows, and therefore it knows, that his vortex manipulator is highly tuned into the Hub’s systems, more so than even Tosh realises. He knows it’s a major security downfall but in many other circumstances this secret backdoor has saved lives, so he keeps it to himself. Not even Ianto realises how much Jack can really control from his wrist.

The access light flashes green and the door unlocks. He pushes it open and stops after stepping through.

Voices down below, hushed but echoing up. Footsteps rattling up the metal staircase.

Jack feels his hand go to the gun in its holster.

_‘They’re coming for you,’_ the voice says.

*~*TW*~*

‘Wait, stop.’

Owen holds a hand out to Gwen and Rhys behind him. They don’t need him to tell them to be quiet now, that much is obvious. He thinks they heard it too.

The door above them, the one Ianto had changed the code to. He heard it, someone just opened it.

He’s sure that if it were Tosh or Ianto, or even Jack, magically recovered, they’d be calling down to the three of them, letting them know it’s safe. The silence is sinister.

He looks back round to Gwen.

‘Do we keep going?’ she mouths, jerking her head upwards in the direction of the door.

Owen is torn. They could try and gets its attention and lead it back down into the maze below, leading it on a merry chase. Would it fall for that? Owen doesn’t know enough about whatever they’re facing. If it’s something that gives chase, it’s been slow about doing it so far. It’s not throwing itself at them right now, he can sense it above them, waiting.

He hears a step above them. Jack’s military issue boots on the metal grille staircase. A tinny echo down to them as the metal rings.

‘Are you looking for me, Torchwood?’

It’s Jack’s voice calling down to them, definitely Jack’s voice – the pitch, the timbre, that silly American accent he puts on – but it’s not Jack. The words are toying with them, playful in a way that’s much darker than when Jack wants a bit of a laugh at any of their expense.

Owen feels Gwen grab his arm, gripping tight.

‘There are three of us,’ she whispers.

‘Two really,’ Owen replies, nodding his head in Rhys’s direction.

‘None taken,’ the other man says. He’s being sarcastic but Owen thinks he surely must know, in his heart of hearts, that’s he’s not that useful to them right now. Rhys is something to be kept safe, not someone who can take the lead and help them out here.

Another step above them, getting closer.

‘I can come and find you, if you’d prefer,’ it says, still cloaked in Jack’s voice. Looking up, Owen can see the dark figure of the man through the slats in the stairs, see the tail of his coat and the bottoms of his boots.

Gwen leans out around the edge of the staircase and raises her gun, pointing it upwards.

‘Not at him,’ she says quietly, ‘just near him, see if we can scare it off.’

Owen looks at her gun and thinks this over. He wishes he knew where Tosh and Ianto were, whether they’re any closer to getting the shell-thing from Jack’s desk and destroying it.

There’s no way to know and he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t want to give it too much time to attack them and chase them back down into the dank labyrinth below. If it has access to Jack’s mind, it’ll be able to find its way around there better than any of them.

He mirrors Gwen’s stance.

‘One,’ he starts and Gwen’s finger slides to her trigger. ‘Two… THREE!’

He shouts the final number knowing it’ll get lost in the blast as he and Gwen fire, bullets whipping free of their chambers and gliding upwards.

Even through the ringing in his ears, Owen can hear an angered yell from Jack and the sound of him falling backwards, caught by surprise.

‘GO, GO!’ Owen shouts, wanting them to capitalise on this moment, to run up and grab hold of the creature in Jack while it’s startled.

They’re not quick enough though. As they storm up the stairs, Jack has righted himself and is back on his feet, firing back down at them. The bullets whizz past them, smashing into the walls, luckily missing them as they ricochet. The clattering sounds of their footsteps are driving it backwards, the door slams above them as they ascend.

Gwen and Rhys are heaving from the exertion of sprinting up so many stairs, and likely dizzy from the spiralling too. For once, Owen is glad that his dead body isn’t held back by these mortal processes, he drives forward, throwing the door open in time to see Jack disappearing back through it.

‘I think it’s scared,’ Gwen is yelling up at Owen, still a good few steps behind him. ‘It needs Jack to stay alive or it’s gone.’

Owen suspects she’s right. It needs to preserve the body it’s taken over. It might know Jack can live forever, but it can also see that his immortality comes with stipulations – it’s not that Jack can’t die, it’s that he can’t stay dead. One death, one total wiping out of his consciousness and bodily functions, could be all that’s needed to rid Jack of this thing.

That’s still just the back-up plan though, still something Owen will do but nothing he’ll relish doing.

He bursts through the second door and into the Hub. Jack is back over by his office, seemingly calmer now. He’s taken on a shooting stance, arms out ready, both hands supporting the gun and his aim.

Owen quickly scans the rest of the room, eyes landing in the door to the car park.

Where the hell are Tosh and Ianto?

*~*TW*~*

Going off plan hadn’t been part of Ianto’s… well, plan. However, he now finds himself sprinting through the archive stacks after Tosh, who’s had a lightbulb moment.

‘Where did you say it was?’ she shouts back at him.

She’s surprisingly quick, Tosh. And she’s able to twist her smaller frame around corners quicker than Ianto, who’s carried further by his own centre of gravity. He grabs out at a shelf to right himself as he takes another corner.

‘Row H!’ he shouts back. ‘Container 42!’

She’s found it. Breathing heavily, she slides the box off its shelf.

‘It just makes sense,’ she says. ‘What else were we going to destroy it with?’

She lifts a large hammer out of the box. It looks to be made of crystal, with a roughly hewn handle and large head, more like a gavel than anything you’d use to do DIY around the house.

‘Jack did say this could shatter almost anything in the universe,’ Ianto reasons, hands on hips to get his breath back.

Tosh slides the empty box back and turns the hammer over in her hands.

‘It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?’ she says.

‘I’d have a hard time saying no if someone proposed to me using a diamond like that,’ he says.

For that’s what the hammer is made of – diamonds. Not just any diamonds though, diamonds from the Damacene Cluster which, according to Jack, are created through such high pressure that they’re three times as hard as any diamond on earth.

Tosh’s PDA beeps. She hands Ianto the hammer and pulls her PDA out.

‘They’re all in the main Hub now,’ she says. ‘We better move.’

Ianto nods and leads the way, running at full tilt once again.

*~*TW*~*

‘I can see everything in his head, you know,’ the alien speaks through Jack’s mouth, gun still pointed at Owen. Gwen and Rhys have caught up to him now, Gwen just behind Owen’s shoulder, fighting to get Rhys back behind her and further out of harm’s way.

‘I don’t really want to know what goes on in Jack’s head, actually,’ Owen tells it. ‘I’ve had a bit of insight after knowing him for a few years and it’s often nicer for us all when he keeps his dirty thoughts to himself.’

He’s got his own gun out too, holding a steady aim at Jack.

‘Oh, but you do want to know, you do,’ it says gleefully. ‘Especially you there. _Gwen_. What she wouldn’t give to know what goes on in his head! I’m right, aren’t I?’

Gwen steps forward, standing beside Owen now, gun also trained on the Jack impersonator.

‘Let Jack go,’ she says, voice firm and even.

‘I could give you all a little taste, if you’d like?’

It’s smirking now, though it’s not like any smirk Owen has ever seen find its way across Jack’s features before. This isn’t sneaky or teasing or knowing. This is evil.

‘Are you sure whatever you tell us isn’t just going to make us want to shoot you more?’ Owen suggests, raising an eyebrow.

‘You have shot him before though, haven’t you?’ it says, then taps the centre of Jack’s forehead. ‘Right through here. Instantaneous death but resurrection comes with a bit of a headache. The betrayal though, the betrayal your leader felt at you killing him, _killing him before you even knew that wouldn’t be it for him_ – well, let’s just say that that still stings. Let’s just say that the trust you broke hasn’t fully healed, even now.’

Owen feels himself falter. His arm wobbles.

‘He’s lying, Owen,’ Gwen hisses. ‘Don’t listen to him, don’t listen to a word it says.’

‘And you, Mrs Cooper. Aren’t you just the perfect little complication for Captain Harkness?’

‘What does he mean, Gwen?’ Rhys asks, unable to stop himself.

‘ _Nothing_ , Rhys. Ignore it!’

‘That’s not true though, is it?’ it continues. ‘There’s more to it than that. Everything’s so complicated in here, everything about your captain is so complicated to you all, but not to me. I can see right through to the heart of him.’

Just then, Tosh and Ianto come flying through the door to the garage, something sparkling in Ianto’s hands.

Jack’s head twists to them, flitting between them and the other three, unsure now where to focus its aim. After a moment, it relaxes.

‘Excellent, the whole team is here now! Who else wants to hear what Jack really has to think about them?’

‘I don’t trust a word you say,’ Ianto tells it, also drawing his gun, the shiny object now tucked under his arm.

Owen tries to make eye contact across the room with the other two. If their plan is going to work, someone needs to draw the Jack puppet away from Jack’s office so someone can get to the shell inside and destroy it.

‘What if I promised to tell you the truth? The whole truth and nothing but the truth? You, Ianto Jones… I think you want to know what’s going on in Jack’s head, in his _heart_ , even more than any of the rest of them do.’

Ianto shrugs. ‘Anything Jack wants to say to me he can tell me himself.’

The Jack creature laughs. ‘Not likely to happen though, is it? Those words you desperately want to hear? He knows you want to hear them and he’s not going to be saying them any time soon.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Owen asks it. ‘We’ve got you surrounded now, give up.’

‘Let me go and I’ll tell you all everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Jack Harkness,’ it says. ‘There it is, that’s my bargain. Guarantee my life and freedom and I’ll trade you every little thing inside Jack’s head.’

As it speaks, it takes a step closer to Owen, Gwen and Rhys. Its eyes never leave Gwen’s. Owen can see them boring into her, mesmerising.

Given the creature is so focused on Gwen, working so hard to convince her it can tell her things she’s always wanted to know, it gives Ianto and Tosh time to move.

As they run towards Jack’s office, Owen takes a sudden dive forwards to distract it. He isn’t quite able to reach, to tackle it and knock it off its feet, but he’s certainly diverted its attention away from Gwen.

He hits the ground hard and, as he rolls over to get back up, he sees Tosh’s feet sprinting into Jack’s office. He catches a glimpse of the shiny thing in her hands and realises now what it is – the Damacene diamond hammer.

Owen launches himself forward again and is this time able to knock the Jack creature over, the pair of them tumbling to the ground. The element of surprise works well for him but as that initial shock fades and the creature catches up to what’s going on, it’s able to take advantage of Jack’s heavier stature and strength. It wraps itself tight about Owen’s body, squirming to pin him down as Owen struggles.

From within Jack’s office, Owen hears the sounds of something shattering.

‘It’s gone,’ Tosh shouts. ‘It’s broken, there’s nothing inside!’

Owen uses all of his might to drive himself up and roll Jack over, flipping the situation so he’s now on top, looking down into Jack’s eyes.

‘Jack?’ he asks.

*~*TW*~*

It’s immediately clear to Ianto that Plan A hasn’t worked. Even as Owen wins the upper hand after Tosh smashes the shell, he can see that nothing has changed.

The whooping laughter tells the same story.

‘Did you really think that would work?’ the creature says with Jack’s voice. ‘That’s just a transport ship, a prison cell! Everything I am is inside Jack now.’

Powered up by this admission, the creature uses Jack’s bodyweight to counteract Owen’s and throw him to one side. Ianto watches as Owen slides across the Hub floor. Rhys rushes over to help pull him up while Gwen keeps her gun trained on Jack.

Tosh emerges from Jack’s office. Ianto catches her eye. She flits her irises first in the direction of her computer, and then back to the cog door. Ianto nods.

He lets his arms drop, bringing his gun to his side.

‘Alright, you win,’ he says, calling over to the Jack creature.

‘Ianto, what the fuck?’ Owen says from the other side of the Hub. Ianto’s sure Owen will cotton on soon but right now, his reaction is just what they need.

Ianto steps backwards towards the cog door.

‘If you let Tosh over to her computer, she can undo the lockdown and we’ll let you go,’ he says.

Jack turns to face Ianto, turning the aim of Jack’s familiar Webley on him now.

‘Why would you do that?’ the creature wearing Jack’s face asks.

‘It won’t be forever,’ Ianto tells it. ‘It’ll just be us getting you out of here before anyone gets hurt, giving you a head start.’

Ianto hopes this deal will appeal to the creature’s vanity. Whatever it is inside Jack, it seems to have an even bigger ego on it than Jack does.

Ianto knows he’s right when the creature sneers.

‘You really think you’ll catch up to me? The teaboy from the estate?’

‘It won’t just be me.’

The creature looks from Ianto, to Owen, to Gwen, to Rhys and to Tosh. It thinks it over.

‘I’ll take my chances,’ it says. It turns to Tosh. ‘I could undo the lockdown myself but having you over by your computers gets one more person out of my path. Do it.’

Tosh hurries over to her desk, not taking her seat, just leaning over and letting her fingers fly over the keyboard. Her gun has been left in jack’s office and Owen’s has skittered away down into the Med Bay as he and Jack wrestled. Only Gwen, Rhys and Ianto are armed now.

The creature looks back to Gwen and Rhys, not taking its aim away from Ianto.

‘Throw your guns away,’ it instructs. ‘You too, Ianto Jones.’

Ianto nods at Gwen and they both do as the creature instructs.

‘Gwen, what’re you doing?’ Rhys asks, aghast.

‘Do as it says, Rhys.’

Ianto can see Rhys fumble the gun in his hand, not wanting to let go of the only thing he feels is protecting him. He has a lot to learn.

After a further moment’s hesitation, he tosses it to one side, joining Gwen’s on the floor.

Now, only the creature is armed, and he’s still targeting Ianto.

‘Good,’ it says. ‘See how I’m the only one armed now? See how I’ve got Mr Jones here in my sight? Any sudden moves and I’ll shoot him clean through the skull.’

They all nod. Ianto’s heart thuds and he prays he’s made the right decision.

The red lights go down and the normal Hub lighting powers back up. The cog door rolls open.

‘It’s done,’ says Tosh.

The creature is already walking past her, winding its way past the workstations towards Ianto, towards the open door.

Ianto can see the whites of its eyes now as it gets closer, can almost feel the heat rippling off the gun pointed at his head. He realises he never asked Tosh exactly where the time lock spread to, he’s not sure whether he’s going to be caught in its field and trapped too.

It doesn’t matter, he thinks. As long as the others get the job done.

The creature is within metres of him now, closing in the distance to the door. He’s looking straight at it, staring into its eyes, hoping that somehow, somewhere in there, Jack can see him. He doesn’t dare think that Jack might be lost to them forever.

*~*TW*~*

Inside his own head, Jack is fighting a different battle. Every ounce he’s got is going in to blotting out any memory he has of Tosh’s timelock. He can tell that’s the team’s plan and he’s able to keep that much away from the creature. They’re all fighting so much for him that this is the least he can do.

Now he’s looking at Ianto, he’s staring right through into him. The creature in his consciousness is reading Ianto’s expression as a challenge but Jack sees something else, sees a message there that’s trying to come through to him.

Suddenly, he becomes aware that his aim is once again trained on Ianto’s head. Whilst he’d been channelling all of his energy into hiding thoughts of the timelock from the creature, he hadn’t even noticed what his body was doing.

He sees it now and panic slides in.

It’s just a tiny moment, but it’s enough for the other consciousness to finally see into the memories Jack had been hiding from it, to see that it’s about to walk right into a trap.

‘Liars!’ it howls as it squeezes the trigger.

And then time stops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More suspense, more tension! I'm enjoying drawing this one out, it's been a while since I wrote a cliff hanger...
> 
> Thanks so much for the kudos and comments, it really does keep me going with this project! It's a pretty big undertaking so your enthusiasm means a lot.


	3. Chapter 3

The time lock is different to what Owen had expected. He didn’t think that it would be visible – not that it’s immediately apparent, but if you know it’s there, you can spot it around the active area. It’s like looking at Jack and Ianto through a huge bubble.

He walks over to it and stares in at the captured scene. Jack’s face is set in a very un-Jacklike expression, a sort of vicious despair writ into the lines of his shouting mouth. Ianto’s face has just about had time to begin to register panic, to recognise that the situation hadn’t been as fully contained as he’d planned.

Owen turns to Tosh and Gwen.

‘Now what the fuck do we do?’ he asks, turning his head to face them. Tosh is still at her workstation, Rhys by her side. Gwen is cautiously approaching the time locked area.

‘What’s the problem?’ Rhys says. ‘Just shoot Jack, right, that was the plan? Not nice, I get it, but he’ll be alright, right?’

‘It’s not that simple, Rhys,’ Gwen tells him. ‘The time lock is just a trap, we were always going to have to disable it when we were ready to shoot – right, Tosh?’

Tosh nods.

‘That’s time trapped in there, Rhys,’ she explains. ‘It’s like… when you pause a film on your TV. You can’t introduce anything new to that scene there now, it’ll stay where it is until you press play again and it’ll carry on exactly as it was always going to.’

‘Only, when we press play in this scenario that shot he started to fire is going to hit Ianto,’ Owen finishes.

Gwen steps around the locked area, careful not to touch it. She leans her face in, looking closely at Jack’s hand and the gun.

‘He’s definitely pulled the trigger. You can see the bullet starting to come out of the barrel, look.’

Owen peers in at where she’s pointing and, true enough, there’s the metal nose of the bullet, gleaming and about to exit Jack’s Webley.

‘Shit,’ he says.

He skirts around the edge of the bubble until he’s behind Jack. He draws himself up to his full height and mirrors Jack’s stance, pretending to let off a shot in Ianto’s direction. It’s hard to pick out the exact line of fire but he thinks the bullet is going towards Ianto’s upper chest and could strike a lung or his heart. If he’s lucky, it’ll be a shoulder. Owen doesn’t think Jack’s aim is high enough to get a killer head shot.

Tosh is over at her computer, clicking away frantically through different screens.

‘I haven’t had time to test the time lock on live subjects yet,’ she says. ‘It looks like it’s only going to hold for five more minutes at most. We have to make a decision.’

Gwen looks to Owen.

‘It’s not really a decision, is it,’ he says. ‘Unless you’ve got any brainwaves over there, Tosh, you’re smarter than the rest of us put together.’

Tosh rolls away from her computer. She takes off her glasses.

‘No bright ideas, sorry,’ she says.

Owen wants to lash out and kick at the time lock but instead steadies himself with a few breaths – not that he can take in any air but he finds the motion of pretending he can soothing. He closes his eyes and takes a moment to think.

When he opens them, Gwen and Tosh are stood in front of him. Rhys is still hanging around near the workstations, looking awkward and very much like he needs some instructions for what to do in this scenario.

‘Can you save Ianto?’ Gwen asks.

‘It might be just a flesh wound,’ Owen says, ‘in which case it’ll sting like bloody murder but I can stitch him up, few day’s bed rest and he’ll be right as rain.’

‘And if it’s not?’ Gwen prods.

Owen feels a phantom spasm pass through the gaping wound in his own chest. No, he thinks, no. The only reason he died was because he wasn’t there to save himself.

‘I saved Tosh, didn’t I?’ he says. ‘Besides, Jack’s a shit shot, we all know that.’

‘Owen,’ Gwen says, tone deathly serious.

‘If it’s through any major organs… It’ll be touch and go but I’ve got the best kit in the world here. Best kit from out of this world! I can do it. Not like we have a choice, anyway. Like they say, bit late when the bullet’s already left the firing pistol.’

Tosh reaches out and takes his hand. He can’t feel her hand on his but it’s a comfort all the same.

‘You can do it,’ she says.

‘I better bloody do. Jack’ll have all our guts for garters if we let anything happen to Ianto.’

A wail sounds up from Tosh’s monitors. She releases Owen’s hand and rushes over to it.

‘It’s destabilising,’ she shouts over the noise, ‘we’ve got less than two minutes.’

Owen steels himself. He looks again from Jack’s face to Ianto’s and prepares for the chaos they’re about to unleash.

‘Gwen, take Rhys and grab my emergency bag from the Med Bay – bring extra gauze and grab a few pairs of gloves,’ he says.

Gwen nods and drags Rhys along with her to the Med Bay. Owen can’t believe that barely an hour ago they’d been looking at their baby on the screen of his alien ultrasound machine. It’s been a hell of a morning.

Owen himself darts across the Hub to retrieve his gun from where it had slid across to during his scuffle with Jack. He checks the chamber – loaded, good. The noise from Tosh’s computer seems to be getting even louder.

Wincing, he calls over to her, ‘How much longer, Tosh?’

‘I can’t tell, the readings are fluctuating,’ she says.

Rhys jogs up out of the Med Bay, arms full of gauze.

‘Where do you want this?’ he asks.

‘As close to Ianto as possible,’ Owen tells him. The doctor in him always wants to do something to help Jack too but he’ll be aiming for an instant kill and he knows Jack’s body can sort itself out from there. He just has to hope that when Jack comes back it’s without whatever had taken over his mind and body.

Gwen appears and follows after Rhys, Owen’s kit bag in hand. He’s got everything he’ll need in there, ready to go.

He finds a position, ready to take Jack down. He wants to make it as clean as possible.

Tosh is at his shoulder again, not touching him but near enough that he can sense she’s there without having to look.

‘I kinda need you to be over there ready to disable this thing, Tosh,’ he says, focusing on his gun. He doesn’t need to do anything with it, there’s not much to do to prepare a handgun.

‘I know… I just…’ she says. She can’t find the words so smiles instead, though it doesn’t reach her eyes, which flicker over to Ianto.

Owen gives up on pretending to do anything more with his gun. He turns to her and smiles too, small and tight.

‘Thanks, Tosh,’ he says.

She rests her hand on his upper arm for a moment.

‘He’s not going to hate you for it,’ she says.

Owen nods.

‘Let’s get on with this.’

Tosh squeezes his arm, an action he sees rather than feels, and heads off to her workstation again.

‘Let me know when you’re ready,’ she calls over.

‘Gwen, Rhys, stand back a bit,’ Owen instructs the couple who are hovering near Ianto’s end of the time lock. ‘In fact, Rhys mate, would you mind just getting completely out of the way? I’ve trained Gwen to help me out in these situations but it’s probably best if you just stay clear.’

Rhys’s mouth opens, Owen is sure that he wants to protest that he can be useful, but there’s a difference between wanting to help and actually being of use. Gwen knows this and steers her husband in the direction of the sofa.

‘We’ll shout if you can help,’ she tells him. She crouches down – Owen’s not sure whether this is so she’s ready to dive into the med bag or because she thinks she’ll be able to catch Ianto should he fall.

‘Owen?’ Tosh shouts from her position.

Owen lines up his shot, Jack in profile in his crosshairs.

‘On three,’ he tells her. ‘One… Two… THREE!’

*~*TW*~*

Jack comes to with a gasp. He feels like a fog has been lifted, like he’s been released from a straight jacket. His head hurts but it’s a good pain, a familiar pain, something that he’s feeling for himself and not through the lens of another.

He just has time to process all of this before his ears tune in to the chaos around him. There’s shouting and cursing, someone barking instructions and others responding.

What was happening before he went down? Wait a second – how had he even died?

Then it comes to him. The time lock. The gun. The echo of Owen’s voice around the Hub as time unfroze and a gun cracked, firing a shot through Jack’s skull.

And before that – Ianto.

Jack hauls himself to his feet, shaking his head to clear it of the shooting pain that accompanies his resurrections. He can see the others now, a few metres away. There’s Gwen crouched down beside a prone body, Owen leaning over it, blocking the face from view. Tosh hovers over them, ready to help with whatever else is needed.

A deep red slick of blood slowly spreads across the floor.

Jack staggers forwards.

‘Jack!’ Tosh cries. ‘Are you –?’

‘I shot him, I shot Ianto,’ the words spill out of Jack’s lips. He’s looking past Tosh, over Gwen’s shoulder, but he can’t see where the wound that Owen is treating is. He can’t see Ianto’s face.

‘Tosh, Gwen, keep him out of my way,’ Owen says firmly, not even looking around.

Jack tries to step closer but finds Gwen blocking his path. She puts her gloved hands out, the gloves smeared with blood, and stops Jack from getting any closer.

‘He’s going to be ok, Jack,’ she says. ‘Just let Owen do his job.’

‘I tried to make it stop,’ Jack says, words continuing to fall out of him, he can’t seem to stem the flow. ‘I couldn’t stop it, I tried to, I really tried. I couldn’t let it hurt any of you. I couldn’t bear it if it laid my hands on any of you and now look what’s happened.’

‘Jack, look at me,’ Gwen says, giving Jack a shake. ‘Ianto’s going to be alright. You – it – hit him just below the shoulder. No danger to major organs.’

Jack takes a breath. The rush of panic starts to leave. His heart still thuds hard against his rib cage but he can collect himself together enough now to become their leader again.

‘He’s going to be ok?’ he asks, just for extra reassurance.

Gwen smiles.

‘So Owen tells me,’ she says. ‘He was with us for a bit when you were… y’know. He’s out now, blood loss, but Owen will have him sorted.’

She allows Jack to step closer now he’s calmer.

‘I swear it – whatever was in my head – it was shooting to kill,’ he says. ‘I’d been trying to stop it but I couldn’t.’

‘Maybe you did,’ Gwen says. ‘Maybe you saw it was going for Ianto and you did just about enough to stop that.’

‘Christ, Gwen,’ Owen says from the floor. ‘This isn’t a fucking Disney movie. More likely the thing didn’t know how to fire earth weapons well. It did a pretty poor job trying to get us earlier too.’

Jack’s heart pounds again. He can remember everything the alien did while in control of his body – the threats, the attacks, those near-misses.

‘I’m so sorry, all of you,’ he says. ‘I should never have gone out and got that thing alone.’

‘New Torchwood policy,’ Tosh chips in. ‘No lone retrievals.’

‘Done.’

‘I believe we also have a policy about using gloves when handling strange artefacts, not that anyone ever listens to me.’

Those Welsh vowels are like music to Jack’s ears.

‘Ianto!’

Gwen can’t stop him this time. Jack brushes past her to get himself down by the other man’s side, not caring about the blood he kneels in. He finds Ianto’s hand and takes it in his own. Ianto smiles weakly, a sheen of sweat shining on his forehead.

‘Careful with him, Jack,’ Owen says, leaning back from where he’d been working on Ianto’s injury. Jack can see now that they’d ripped his shirt open giving Owen access to work on the wound. ‘The shot clipped his clavicle, lodged the bullet in his flesh. I’ve got it now – those stitches should hold things together but he’s going to be in a sling for a few weeks.’

‘And that’s my favourite arm too,’ Ianto quips and Owen snorts. He rips open a bandage and sticks it down over the stitching he’s just finished.

‘How’re you feeling?’ Jack asks him.

‘Oh, y’know, a little bit shot,’ he jokes, but squeezes Jack’s hand all the same. ‘It seems only fair, everyone else here has taken a bullet.’

‘You’ve been shot?!’ a voice yelps from across the Hub. Rhys, perched on the arm of the sofa – Jack had completely forgotten he was there.

Gwen stares down at Ianto, face like thunder.

‘Oh, uh, no, not Gwen actually,’ he says quickly, panic-stricken at Gwen’s murderous look, and Jack laughs. ‘Must be these pain meds talking.’

*~*TW*~*

Jack climbs up out his bunk, freshly showered, a clean shirt draped over his shoulders. He stands at his window to button it, looking out at his team.

They’re all gathered around the sofa, Ianto sat in the middle, Gwen and Tosh squeezed in on either side of him, Owen rolled up to them on his desk chair and Rhys on Gwen’s. They’re all laughing at something Owen is telling them, though this is soon joined by eye rolls – a typical Owen story, by the looks of it.

Ianto is looking paler than normal, arm wrapped across his body in a tight sling, the edge of a bandage poking out of the collar of his spare t-shirt. Owen has insisted he go home and get a good night’s rest in his own bed and Jack has insisted in being the person to get him there. This has come with further warning from Owen to leave Ianto alone to rest and not to bother him. Jack would taken offence at Owen’s low expectations of him if they weren’t entirely accurate. Even so, he intends to give Ianto the space he needs to get better.

After all, the sooner he gets better, the sooner Jack can bother him again.

Gwen spots Jack watching them and gets to her feet. She heads over and pokes her head in through Jack’s office door.

‘I’m going to take Rhys home,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back in-,’

‘Take the day,’ Jack says. ‘I’m sure we all need to get out of here for a bit.’

‘Really?’

Jack nods. Beaming, Gwen is about to leave but then changes her mind. She steps into the office and closes the door, leaning back against it.

‘You alright?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, yeah, I just… The things it told us, Jack, the things about what you think about all of us… Was any of it true?’

Jack had thought this was coming. He finishes buttoning his shirt and adjusts the collar.

‘Is any answer I give you to that question going to make you feel happy?’ he asks her.

Gwen takes a moment to answer, considering his question.

‘No, no, I suppose not,’ she replies.

‘There we go then.’

The Gwen of old, the Gwen who had wandered into the Hub carrying a stack of pizza boxes addressed to Torchwood, would have probed harder than this, always wanting more. This Gwen though, his Gwen who has seen things and has spent so much more time with Jack, seems to accept his answer.

It’s maybe this that causes Jack to add, unprompted, as she goes to leave,

‘But, Gwen, know this – if there was any truth to anything it said, it’s not what I think about any of you _now_. It couldn’t be. We all have fleeting thoughts about the people we know and love, the people we interact with the most. Our views change as we get to know people and, hey, some times they just change because they’ve done something to piss us off that day. That doesn’t mean we hate them forever. Those day to day things… they don’t change how we really feel about someone, not really. It all adds up to create that feeling we have for someone, that feeling we have when they’re not around and we think of them. That stuff gets ingrained. What I really think and feel about all of you, _my team_ – you all lived up to that today.’

Gwen smiles.

‘Profound, Jack,’ she teases.

He shrugs. ‘It’s been known to happen.’

‘I hope I’m around next time it does,’ she says. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

She heads out, leaving Jack alone once again. He reaches across his desk to pick up his watch and slip it onto his wrist. As he does so, he notices the remnants of the alien shell, bagged up next to the Damacene diamond hammer. He hopes Ianto hasn’t been busying himself with tidying up whilst waiting for Jack – but wait, no, as he looks closer he spots the handwriting on the bag’s label and it’s not Ianto’s, it’s Tosh’s.

Under ‘origin’ she has written ‘Unknown’. And under ‘Name’, she has put ‘The reason we don’t go out on Rift retrievals alone’.

Jack chuckles. It’s not as catchy as some of Ianto’s name suggestions but it’s certainly accurate.

He grabs the keys to the SUV, slips into his coat and leaves to take Ianto home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one to bring an end to all that suspense! Hope you've enjoyed and thanks to everyone who leaves kudos or a comment!
> 
> Next up, episode 6: Pregnant woman are going missing all over Cardiff. It's the perfect undercover mission for Gwen and her undercover husband Jack as they head out to ante-natal classes to begin the investigation.


End file.
